I’m old enough to remember when the American political and media establishment wracked itself into knots over the fact that the executive branch had been using the CIA and Hoover’s FBI to spy on domestic political opposition.

Among my earliest memories of politics and news – after Watergate, naturally – were the Church Commission hearings, which clamped down on the use of intelligence and law enforcement for domestic shenanigans.

Following months of angry claims by journalists and Democratic operatives that the Obama administration never spied on Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, The New York Times admitted Thursday that multiple overseas intelligence assets were deployed against associates of the Republican nominee. It is not the first time the Times has revealed widespread spying operations against the campaign.

In addition to noting that long-time informant Stefan Halper was tasked with collecting intelligence on the Trump campaign, the Times story details how a woman was sent overseas under a fake name and occupation to oversee the spy operation. The woman’s real name is not mentioned in the article, though the Times says she went by “Azra Turk” and has a relationship with an unidentified federal intelligence agency.

It would be the ultimate Berg’s Seventh Law reference, if it turned out that the left’s two-year-long tantrum over “collusion” were simultaneously deflection and projection.

ME: The Democrats have been introducing bills that would ban vast swathes of guns, and have been telegraphing that they see the whole thing as an incremental process. Perhaps you could stand to open your mind and learn a bit.

THEY: I don’t have time to obsess over this stuff.

ME: Well, those of us who make the time are telling you – the threat is real.

THEY: You’re paranoid! Nobody is coming for your guns! Period!

ME: Um…again, the proposals are on the books, and have taken effect in some places. Seriously, here are the cases…

THEY: I don’t have time to obsess over this stuff.

ME: Yeah, so I hear – but those of us who stay involved are telling you – the threat is no joke.

Psychological Projection is when I assume you have the bad traits that I deny I have. A liar will assume everyone else is a liar. It’s embodied in Berg’s Seventh Law.A mobster predicts Trump will have Cohen “whacked” in prison because that’s what happens to snitches. The story itself is proof Trump isn’t a mobster. If he was an actual mobster (or even a Clinton), Cohen would already be dead.

And let’s talk about all those violence-worshiping Democrats yipping about Cal Bahr.

I’m not sure how old the adage is – but liberals should take keen advice from the phrase “only give your side the power you’re not afraid of your enemy having”.

For example, many on the left express worry about the Trump administration stance – hostility – towards the media.

They do this, apparently, forgetting that Trump isn’t doing anything that Obama did and pave the way to:

Criticism of Mr. Obama’s stance on press freedom, government transparency and secrecy is hotly disputed by the White House, but many journalism groups say the record is clear. Over the past eight years, the administration has prosecuted nine cases involving whistle-blowers and leakers, compared with only three by all previous administrations combined. It has repeatedly used the Espionage Act, a relic of World War I-era red-baiting, not to prosecute spies but to go after government officials who talked to journalists.

Under Mr. Obama, the Justice Department and the F.B.I. have spied on reporters by monitoring their phone records, labeled one journalist an unindicted co-conspirator in a criminal case for simply doing reporting and issued subpoenas to other reporters to try to force them to reveal their sources and testify in criminal cases.

In the place of ABC’s late-night Jimmy Kimmel: The “Man Show” Jimmy Kimmel. The only thing missing were the women on trampolines.

Kimmel took aim Thursday at the Christian proprietor of Masterpiece Cakeshop in Colorado. For the late-night funny man, the takeaway from Jack Phillips’ refusal to bake a cake celebrating a trans person’s transition is that the cakemaker might be gay, and that he sure looks gay.

“It’s funny because this is a guy who spends all day, every day, meticulously designing flowers out of icing. His whole life is gay, OK?” Kimmel said to laughs. “I don’t know if the wrong cake might bring that to life or what.”

The late-night host turned his attention to the shop owner’s physical appearance, adding for good measure that Phillips is “the totally straight cake baker.”

“You would think that someone who looks like the Reba McEntire’s version of Col. Sanders would be more sympathetic to gender identity issues,” the host laughed.

“Progs” jabber about “right wing hate”, and then marinade their own culture in the real thing.

Progs at Evergreen State (but I repeat myself) equate science and white supremacy:

Earlier this week, some graffiti was spotted on campus that sought to couterpose intersectionality and the sciences, equating the latter with white supremacy. Facilities staff have completed the chore of cleaning up the graffiti.

Bret Weinstein – the former ESU bio prof who became a national symbol for the intolerant left, had a riposte:

George,

During the @EvergreenStCol riots, students of color were chastised as traitors for studying science, science faculty were hunted, and you ordered campus police to stay out of it. Don’t pretend this graffiti is surprising. These are your chickens, home to roost.

Can you imagine if a significant Republican were to acknowledge that violence was a good thing in pursuit of political ends?

No, not Donald Trump urging his supporters to “hit back”, at a time when people were, y’know, hitting them first. .No, actually forming groups and going out and beating up people who dissent from the GOP.

Can you imagine the projectile pants-soiling that’d happen?

Especially if it weren’t some marginal figure – but a sitting Congressman? To say nothing of a member of the party’s central leadership?

Ellison, the deputy chairman of the Democratic National Committee, posted a photo on Twitter Wednesday of himself posing with the book “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook.” The book calls violence during counter-protests “a small though vital sliver of anti-fascist activity.”

Ellison’s post said the book should “strike fear into the heart” of President Donald Trump.

Big Left, via its subsidiary Big Media, loves to remind us that “Right Wing Violence” is the “real” danger, and is lurking around the corner, one of these days, honest.

Gun violence prevention control grouips are fond of whipping up “popular” anger against “the gun lobby” – portrayed as an immense, boundlessly wealthy group of heartless white guys with three piece suits and cigars, cackling with glee at the deaths of innocent children. Big Left has worked overtime to try to demonize civil rights groups, especially the NRA, as 900 pound gorillas that the plucky criminal-safety advocates can’t possibly compete with.

So what’s the truth?

As always – read Berg’s Seventh Law: “When a Liberal issues a group defamation or assault on conservatives’ ethics, character, humanity or respect for liberty or the truth, they are at best projecting, and at worst drawing attention away from their own misdeeds.”.

After compiling the numbers we discovered pro-gun control candidates received more than six times more money than pro-gun rights candidates on the issue.

Last year, the largest recipient of campaign cash from pro-gun rights groups in Oregon was Laura Morett. The Republican candidate for state representative and former “Survivor” reality show contestant received $10,132.86 total from the Oregon Firearms Federation and the National Rifle Association (NRA). Despite the infusion of cash, Morett was not successful in defeating state Rep. Paul Evans, D-Salem.

“But Mitch – that’s Oregon!”

The ration is even more lopsided in Minnesota, where the antis outspent the good guys nearly 10:1 in the 2016 legislative elections.

Al Franken resigned so that the full weight of the Democrat noise machine can turn its attention to attacking Roy Moore – thereby returning the narrative to “The Republican War On Women”.

Speaking of which – has there ever been a better Berg’s Seventh Law violation than “The War On Women”?

Anyway – this past few months, our society’s been focused incessantly on the various grades of “Sexual Harassment” – the use of un-consented flirting, “blue” conversation, touching and more aggressive sexual contact, especially that which takes place in the context of a power disparity. Whether it’s feeling entitled to grab a little “no go zone” anatomy without consent, to trading sex for advancement, to using the resources of the state you govern to silence people who complain about what you do, and everything in between, the genera consensus is “It’s bad”.

So our society’s been lingering for a few months on every possible permutation of sexual harassment, and how society deals with it (“due process”? “Always believe women!”? “Always believe women, unless they’re accusing men who are key votes for abortion rights legislation”?), I think it’s time to look at another version.

And no, the right doesn’t do the same thing. Have you ever heard a conservative rip on, say, Paul Thissen or Tom Bakk for “betraying middle aged white guys” [1] by not being a conservative? No. And you never will.

But you do hear mainstream “progressives” tear into black, Latino, asian and female conservatives for, I kid you not, “betraying” their race and gender. [2]

And if any of them run for office? They turn psychotic (which brings us to Berg’s Eight Law).

In particular, I’ve talked with a number of female conservatives who’ve related a similar pattern to me; they’ve thought about running for office, or for higher office – but demurred…

…because they knew the Democrat smear machine was going to do in terms of splashing their private life, current, past and long-past, in public.

So let’s get this straight: to “Progressive” “feminists”, “slut-shaming” women who have had more than one partner in their lives, or who’ve gone out in public dressed as someone other than Hester Prynne, is completely unacceptable – unless one has:

Accused a Democrat politician of some sort of impropriety, in which it will be used to discredit you

Run for office as a non-Democrat, in which case it will be used to assassinate your character.

Which, put another way, is using sex to preserve disparate power.

[1] Their narrative about conservatives and conservatism. Not mine.

[2] Conservatism is never, ever about identity. Anyone who says it is is driven by narrative, not fact.

Shortly after the shooting Wednesday morning at a congressional baseball practice, Rep. Mark Walker (R-N.C.) told NBC News that it appeared the “gunman was there to kill as many Republican members as possible.” Walker, who was at the practice for the upcoming annual congressional baseball game in Alexandria, Virginia, confirmed he was “shaken but okay.”

“Punch a Nazi”.

“Anti-Fa”.

Hello, Liberals – when so much of your side is awash in demented hatred (the real thing, not the “disagreement with our narrative is hate” thing that so many of you jabber about), and given the instability wrapped in entitlement that so many people on your side have, what do you think is going to happen?

Be careful out there, Real Americans. It’s gonna get worse before it gets better.

UPDATE: While Berg’s 19th Law is still in effect (“Nothing the media writes/says about any emotionally charged event – a mass shooting, a police shooting, anything – should be taken seriously for 48 hours after the original incident. It will largely be rubbish, as media outlets vie to “scoop” each other even on incorrect facts”), the shooter’s Facebook page indicates he is a Sanders supporter.

This was codified in 2006, in “Berg’s Seventh Law of Liberal Projection“. To wit: “When a Liberal issues a group defamation or assault on conservatives’ ethics, character, humanity or respect for liberty or the truth, they are at best projecting, and at worst drawing attention away from their own misdeeds.”

The more politics I watch, the more I realize Berg’s Seventh Law – which started as a flippant observation of casual hypocrisy…:

“When a Liberal issues a group defamation or assault on conservatives’ ethics, character, humanity or respect for liberty or the truth, they are at best projecting, and at worst drawing attention away from their own misdeeds”

…truly does pretty much explain the entire American left.

To wit: the left is barbering about the suffocating control an Eastern European kleptocrat has over the American right? Look for an Eastern European kleptocrat pulling the strings behind the American left.

By my draft research, which I’m opening up for crowd-sourcing on GoogleDocs, Soros has funded, or has close relationships with, at least 56 of the march’s “partners,” including “key partners” Planned Parenthood, which opposes Trump’s anti-abortion policy, and the National Resource Defense Council, which opposes Trump’s environmental policies. The other Soros ties with “Women’s March” organizations include the partisan MoveOn.org (which was fiercely pro-Clinton), the National Action Network (which has a former executive director lauded by Obama senior advisor Valerie Jarrett as “a leader of tomorrow” as a march co-chair and another official as “the head of logistics”). Other Soros grantees who are “partners” in the march are the American Civil Liberties Union, Center for Constitutional Rights, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. March organizers and the organizations identified here haven’t yet returned queries for comment.

Presumably because they’re jetting off to Riyadh to protest treatment of women in the Middle East.

The goal, of course, was to simultaneously attack Emmer and try to intimidate Minnesota businesses into not donating to Republicans; if they could cause problems for the mighty Target, what could they do to a machine shop in Owatonna?

“The epidemic of malicious fake news and false propaganda that flooded social media over the past year — it’s now clear the so-called fake news can have real-world consequences,” Clinton said during a speech on Capitol Hill.

Some Democrats have argued the spread of anti-Clinton fake news online contributed to her electoral loss to Donald Trump.

Several problems with this theory:

There was at least as much “fake news” supporting Hillary. My social media feed was clogged with photomemes and phony stories from groups like “Occupy Democrats”.

Not so much a “problem” but an observation; this is just another symptom of the cranky arrogance that helped Clinton lose the election in the first place; “If you deplorables weren’t so stupid, believing the wrong fake news, ‘d be in the White House again!”.

The mainstream media is less fake than “Occupy Democrats” – but it’s a matter of degree.

I suspect that Hillary Clinton has enough states with enough electoral votes to win the election – at that the vote-generation systems in her blue-city base of operations will generates any votes needed to give her the win. 1

And while any given liberal is no more likely to be violent than any given conservative, the fact is that when liberals get scared – and they are always terrified about something – some of them get violent.

In late July an unidentified 60-year-old man was shot in the leg at Winston’s Bar on Cleveland’s East Side. His assailant, Darnell Hall, 45, shot him after their discussion of presidential politics grew heated. The attacker “was enraged that anyone in the overwhelmingly African-American bar would support the GOP nominee,” the Plain Dealer reports. Hall later surrendered to police and was charged with felonious assault.
Two UCLA students told Sean Hannity on Oct. 25 they’ve seen a lot of anti-Trump violence on campus. Haley Nieves said protesters crashed one of their pro-Trump rallies. “They were stomping on the American flag during the event and even attempting to burn it afterward.” Dominique Blair said, “You face crazy leftist mobs that are not tolerant of your views whatsoever, and it turns into a lot of bad debates. Sometimes violent, sometimes hitting and fights. I’ve been all around it.” Blair added, “I am treated very poorly on my campus and other campuses. It’s very hard to be a conservative activist in Los Angeles.”

Given the amount of ink the left’s media has expended fretting about largely nonexistent violence on the right, you can expect the left to act out badly over the next couple days.

And if Hillary somehow loses?

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

1 – If you’re a regular commenter prone to claiming nobody can see, hear or say anything about vote fraud, do not bother leaving a comment until you have resonded tothis question it in detail. I’m done playing games.

Know how I knew there was a Democrat plan to use physical violence on pro-Trump and pro-GOP rallies?

Because the media has been spending so much time talking about the “threat” of GOP violence against Democrats.

When I heard NPR last week solemnly intoning about the “threat” of “people in open-carry states standing around polling stations with guns”, doing whatever it is they were supposed to be doing, it was obvious to me; attention needed to be turned away from “progressive” thugs.

When a Liberal issues a group defamation or assault on conservatives’ ethics, character, humanity or respect for liberty or the truth, they are at best projecting, and at worst drawing attention away from their own misdeeds.

Because it truly does explain everything:

Democratic Party operative Robert Creamer used terror to wage war on honesty. Until forced to resign his post as a “consultant” with a Democratic Party-aligned organization named Americans United for Change, Creamer ran what amounts to a domestic U.S. political terror and propaganda operation dedicated to undermining the 2016 U.S. presidential election—“rigging the election,” to use the current term.

Creamer resigned as an official consultant because Part One and Part Two exposed him. His operation, however, remains active and continues to do damage. The election rigging scheme he commanded relies on street thuggery. That means physical fear—terror—is a core component of Americans United for Change’s crooked enterprise. Street thuggery is very low-level terrorism, but it is a type of terrorism nonetheless and it is wrong to call it otherwise.

The thing about terrorists is that their goal is to destroy moderation; to make the center untenable; you’re either with them 100%, or against them 100%. That’s intentional; the chaos in between creates opportunity for those willing to exploit it.

Which the GOP – still focusing on all of that “Constitution” and “economy” and “Democracy” stuff – never really is, for better or worse.

Remember when Democrats couldn’t stop talking about the Koch brothers (who aren’t even among the top fifty political donors in the country) and the American Legislative Exchange Committee, a “think tank” utterly similar to an array of such groups on both sides of the aisle?

What does the “Alt-Right” have in common with 2014’s Koch Brothers, 2012’s “ALEC”, 2010’s “Tea Party”, 2004’s “neocons”, and 1994’s “Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy?”

Everything!

One of the great staples of politics – in this case, the left, although the right does it too (although with less cynical panache or institutional momentum) – is “finding a boogeyman to wave around to scare the crap out of your base”, ideally motivating them to come to the polls.

In 1996, it was Hillary’s “vast right-wing conspiracy” – the shadowy, all-powerful and, as it happens, fictitious conglomeration of Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and, er, others, I guess – whom the left trumpeted as the real machers behind the scenes, operating against the plucky underdogs of the left (like George Soros and Paul Allen).

In 2004, it was the “Neocons” – a shadowy, all-powerful, and vaguely Jew-y band of conspirators who wanted to control All the Oil and kill All the Muslims for Israel, or something, arrayed against the plucky, grass-roots left ((like George Soros and Paul Allen).

In 2010, it was the “Tea Party” – a fairly spontaneous outpouring of libertarian populism which threatened the plucky, organic left ((like Journo-List, George Soros and Paul Allen).

In 2014 it was the “Koch Brothers”, a couple of libertarian billionaires with a history of donating to libertarian causes on both sides of the political aisle who, though they aren’t even among the top fifty individual political donors, were portrayed by the left’s plucky, grass-roots PR machine (funded by George Soros and Paul Allen) as a shadowy, vaguely Jew-y conspiracy to buy the government.

So of course the “Alt Right” – a tiny, politically inconsequential group of marginal people with marginal-radical views on some hot-topic issues – is suddenly in the news.

Of course, in every case, Berg’s Seventh Law applies; for every one of these purported right wing big-money “conspiracy”, there was a real-world left-wing counterpart doing exactly what the left accused the right of doing.

Victor Davis Hanson reminds us: If you don’t like something Trump has said, just take a deep breath…

…and remember when a Democrat inevitably said, or did, something much worse:

Trump reprehensibly has urged his supporters to physically tangle with opponents. But, after Chicago, did he emulate a presidential urge “to argue with them and get in their face!”? When Trump does his next Philadelphia rally, will he, in Obama fashion, egg on his Trumpsters with this: “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun. Because from what I understand, folks in Philly like a good brawl. I’ve seen Eagles fans.” Or maybe Trump could adapt another line from Obama and use it with his working-class white supporters, cautioning them that, instead of sitting out the election, they should say, “We’re gonna punish our enemies and we’re gonna reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to us.” Or maybe Trump could try still another adaptation of a line from President Obama for those stubborn senators who favor open borders: “Those aren’t the kinds of folks who represent our core American values.”

They’re back. In the wake of the shooting at the abortion mill in Colorado Springs, and the shooting in Minneapolis (and to a lesser extent last week’s shootings in San Bernardino, which the left tried its level best to jam into the template), the talking heads of the left are furrowing their brows and warning us, yet again, about the imminent danger of “white christian right-wing terror”, which, we’re warned, is a huge danger, and could become the biggest most dangerous terror out there. Says someone in the government. Because science.

It’s BS, of course; while white “conservative” terror was a real thing during the heyday of the Klan, by the seventies it had largely faded to obscurity; today, the Klan and other white/”Christian” identity movements are a pimple on society’s tush.

Indeed, the numbers aren’t even arguable; left-wing environmental groups committed more terror attacks than all other sources combined from 2001-2011; while 9/11 outstripped them all in terms of dead people, the level of effort was lopsided in favor of the left.

And yet the left – from Janet Napolitano to MPR’s Bob Collins down to the dimmest writer at Minnesota Progressive Project, assures us that white terror is the real danger.

Don’t tell the alarmists that, though. Even before this weekend’s shooting at a Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood clinic, left-wing sites trumpeted the threat of “Christian terrorists” while minimizing the threat of jihadists. This summer, the New York Times hyped a transparently idiotic study claiming that (mainly right-wing) homegrown extremists were deadlier than jihadists — by excluding from the death toll the almost 3,000 Americans who died on 9/11 and the nearly 7,000 Americans killed — not to mention the more than 52,000 Americans wounded — at the hands of radical Islamists overseas. SHARE ARTICLE ON FACEBOOKSHARE TWEET ARTICLETWEETSince the Planned Parenthood shooting, leftists have indicted the pro-life movement itself for the actions of a bitter and angry loner with no known connections to any activist organization. The Huffington Post wrote a story noting that Colorado Springs is full of — gasp! — Christians. Buzzfeed published a comprehensive report demonstrating exactly how abortion-rights activists intend to turn the Colorado shooting into a “rallying cry.”

Last week, when stickers labeling establishments as “exclusively for white people” went up around Austin, Texas, I quietly figured it had to be a “progressive” false flag.

Why?

Because Bergs Seventh Law (“When a Liberal issues a group defamation or assault on conservatives’ ethics, character, humanity or respect for liberty or the truth, they are at best projecting, and at worst drawing attention away from their own misdeeds”), that’s why.

So – were those “exclusively for white people” stickers a progressive false flag?

Duh…:

[Austin lawyer] Adam Reposa posted the video on YouTube and made a statement on Facebook saying he was trying promote the issue of gentrification in East Austin. (Warning: The video contains explicit language)
“They’re getting pushed out, and pretty quick. This area of town is turning into white’s only,” Reposa said in the clip. “Not by law like it used to be, and everyone’s going to jump on, ‘that’s racist!’ ‘that’s racist!’ Man, this town, the way **** works is racist! And I knew I could just bait all of y’all into being as stupid as you are.”
Reposa went on to blast people for not getting the message.

“You’re just not smart enough to keep up with my argument!”

I started Berg’s Law as a joke, pretty much, back in 2004. But the more I see, the less funny they seem.

Except, of course, is that I still laugh my butt off at “progressives”.